alt Hacker NewsIt’s very simple.
They purchased the right to distribute the books on their terms.
You don’t like the terms, so you call them predatory. You want the product, so you just take it on your own terms.
Morally, that’s no different than your employer just deciding to pay you less than your contract states, because he decides he doesn’t like the terms of the agreement anymore.
You don’t gain a right to take things just because you want them or need them.
Replies
ElevenLathe • yesterday at 8:40 PM
Your morality is pretty strange if it equates ignoring some of the more odious terms in a hundred-page click-through EULA to knowingly engaging in wage theft. I would honestly like to hear you explain that further.
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It's even simpler than that:
Genuine rights cannot be transferred. Everything else is just an attempt to somehow determine who is allowed to make money from what. You shouldn’t take this too seriously, and certainly shouldn’t turn it into a fetish. You should treat it like traffic rules: if no one is watching and it’s obvious that no one can get hurt, then you can basically do whatever you want. It’s very important to clearly distinguish true morality from this false morality, which is nothing more than the preservation of existing privileges. Those who fail to make this distinction tend to neglect true morality.